Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information Introduction Those familiar with the works of Agnolo Bronzino generally think either of his austere portraits or the famous Allegory of Venus (see Fig. 18), paintings that have long captivated viewers. A haunting passage from Henry James's The Wings of the Dove (1902) beautifully captures the fascination of Bronzino's paintings. In the novel James's heroine, Milly Theale, looks at Bronzino's Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi (Fig. 1). Milly, an American heiress, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Lucrezia, tearfully gazes long at this "mysterious," "strange," "fair," and "won• derful" image. Milly sees: the face of a young woman, all magnificently drawn, down to the hands, and magnificently dressed; a face almost livid in hue, yet handsome in sadness and crowned with a mass of hair rolled back and high, that must, before fading with time, have had a family resemblance to her own. The lady in question, at all events, with her slightly Michelangelesque squareness, her eyes of other days, her full lips, her long neck, her recorded jewels, her brocaded and wasted reds, was a very great personage — only unaccompanied by a joy. And she was dead, dead, dead.1 Like the allusions to other works of art in James's fiction, this descrip• tion provides more than an ornamental backdrop.2 The painting func• tions in many ways. It prompts a meditation that accompanies Milly's guileless conquest of English society at a great country house. Little about Milly aside from superficial particulars — her prodigious fortune, beauty, and charm — is known at this point, and her response to the painting serves to augur many truths. On the most immediate level, the i © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information BRONZINO i. Bronzino, Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi, c 1540, Uffizi, Florence. Photo: Courtesy Alinari/Art Resource, New York. stunning portrait mirrors Milly's own brilliant surface. The passage also portends, through the incantatory repetition of "dead, dead, dead," what has yet to be revealed, namely, Milly's awareness of her own mortality. Finally, her profound reaction to this portrait of a "very 2 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information INTRODUCTION great personage/' who is at once "sad" and "magnificent," hints at unexpected depths in Milly's character. James's richly nuanced description of Lucrezia Panciatichi's noble features and elaborate dress coincided with a renewed appreciation of Bronzino's art at the turn of the century.3 James also hints at subtleties in Bronzino's art left unnoticed by earlier critics. He detects a tension in the portrait: while he admires the gorgeous surface — the sub• ject's magnificent dress, jewels, and beautifully coifed hair — he also registers her deathly pallor and sad expression. This disparity between a ravishing outward splendor and an unknowable inner sorrow makes for a decided ambiguity. It is perhaps Bronzino's uncanny ability to render such elusive figures that entrances modern viewers. James's observation of a certain tension in the portrait also coincides well with post-Freudian sensibilities attuned to the working of the unconscious — to that which resists knowledge and is perhaps un• knowable. Subsequent characterizations of Bronzino's art echo some of James's observations. Numerous art historians, for example, have praised the elegance of Bronzino's figures and his painstaking rendering of surface details. Others have commented on the sculptural forms of his figures. Scholars also emphasize qualities not mentioned by James; they concen• trate more on the effect of the portraits. Many critics find the paintings harsh and astringent. Expressions such as "cold," "hard," "inaccessible," "severe," "contained," "glacial," "melancholy reserve," "marmoreal sur• faces," "impossibly remote," "inexpressibly chilling," and "frozen stat• uesque poses" pepper descriptions of Bronzino's art. Notwithstanding their different objectives, both scholars and writers find the subjects' expressions largely indecipherable. Bronzino's most well-known works are famously resistant to interpretation. As many art historians have observed, his tautly set figures resemble still lives; their faces have the impenetrability of masks.4 Characterizations of two other major Renaissance portraitists, Titian and Raphael, differ substantially. Art historians typically praise Titian's abilities to capture the quintessence of a figure, noting, for example, that each of his portraits constitutes a "unique experience." In his discussion of Titian's Pietro Aretino (Fig. 2), one distinguished art his• torian observes that the painting is perhaps "too truthful" in its frank representation of the writer's considerable girth, pugnaciousness, alert 3 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information BRONZINO 2. Titian, Portrait of Pietro Arttino, c. 1545, Palazzo Pitti, Florence. Photo: Courtesy Alinari/Art Resource, New York. eyes, and caustic mouth.5 Titian's Portrait of a Bearded Man (Fig. 3), sometimes considered a portrait of Ludovico Ariosto, elicits similar comments. As a critic declares, the painting presents "a face of the utmost composure and dignity, fully capable of holding its own against the blinding beauty of the sleeve."6 The painting provides a stunning emanation of the subject's inner nature. In a similar vein, critics single out for praise the manner in which Raphael, in a way no less extraor• dinary than Titian, conveys the essence of his subjects. Raphael's Baldassare Castiglione (Fig. 4) incarnates the "cool composure" and "inner calm" of the ideal courtier, just as his Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de} Medici and Luigi de Rossi (Fig. 5) provides a "searching analysis" of the corpulent, luxury-loving Medici pope seated at a table bearing precious objects.7 Looking at such expressive portraits as these, one readily accedes to the claims of contemporary poets who praise Titian's and 4 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information INTRODUCTION 3. Titian, Portrait of a Bearded Man, c. 1510—1515, National Gallery, London. Photo: Courtesy Alinari/Art Resource, New York. Raphael's abilities to render both the physical and the psychological identities of their subjects. The austerity of Bronzino's portraits, in contrast, permits no such penetration into a sitter's inner being. Indeed one might go so far as to observe that Bronzino places himself against this tradition of revelation, preferring to present viewers with visual conundrums — seemingly petrified figures with detached, evacuated expressions that betray nothing about themselves. Of course, some figures are less know- able than others. Some of Bronzino's subjects are true mysteries: we simply do not know the identities of the figures in works such as the Portrait of a Young Man (see Fig. 28) or the Youth with a Lute in Florence's Uffizi Gallery. Ignorant of the biographical particu• lars that might accord these individuals meaning, we cannot "read" 5 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information BRONZINO 4. Raphael, Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, c. 1515, The Louvre, Paris. Photo: Courtesy Giraudon /Art Resource, New York. such subjects, and our observations concerning these works must be confined largely to comments on what the subjects' dress or pose, or the objects surrounding the figures, might connote. Yet even those figures whose identities are known do not lend themselves easily to interpretation. Perhaps no painting more encapsulates the inaccessibility of Bronzino's portraits than does the famous Portrait of Eleonora di Toledo with Her Son Giovanni (Fig. 6). Like many of Bronzino's portraits, this work presents us with a full disclosure of the sitters' outer realities but no hint of their inner qualities. Whereas the duchess's dress is rendered with an almost photographic realism, her impassive face reveals nothing beyond her exterior countenance. The dress, almost phantasmagorical in its effects due to the extravagant arabesque pattern, dominates the picture. We are encouraged to read the garment itself as Eleonora, as an ostentatious symbol of her power and station.8 Bronzino's art is 6 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-78166-4 - Bronzino: Renaissance Painter as Poet Deborah Parker Excerpt More information INTRODUCTION 5. Raphael, Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de Medici and Luigi de Rossi, c. 1517. Uffizi, Florence. Photo: Courtesy Alinari/Art Resource, New York. unusually impersonal, his figures exceptionally reserved. Both the artist and his work are elusive. Much of Bronzino's elusiveness as an artist derives from the sketch- iness of his biography. There is a certain impenetrability to his life. The few facts we possess about